That's the end of elections for another year, and the last year I'll be involved in the Union. It's been a helluva fortnight, with a larger UPSU Media presence than ever before.

For the first year ever, we've had photographers and videographers (is that the right term?) running around at pretty much every elections-related event, a massive amount of visual media, a great deal of coverage in Pugwash News, not to mention Pure FM's involvement in interviewing the candidates live on air and broadcasting the hustings candidates' question time events in the evenings last week.

I'm amazingly proud and grateful to all of our student volunteers for all their work in the last few weeks - we have, for the first time, a lot of video footage (and there's more to come, which will be used as teaser-material for next year I hope), and there's been an almost constant stream of photos and updates going online from elections-related events.

(You can check out the elections photos, videos, and Pure FM podcasts, and our elections minisite - the largest ever at 75 pages - here).

This year, we've seen roughly a 15% rise in voter turnout despite the poor weather and the end of term (who doesn't know at least one friend who went home half way through this week suffering from parental withdrawal symptoms? ;o) and, although candidate numbers were the same as last year (fourteen candidates), the distribution among positions has been almost diametrically opposed, with last year's least-contested positions seeing the largest numbers of candidates this year.

A couple of people have observed that this year's line-up has been a very marked "pitched battle" between sports clubs and societies and, while I can't comment on how accurate that statement is - it is, after all, a pretty narrow-focused assessment of a candidate to say that they're a "sporto" or "society person" (or "soco"?) - the figures do seem to show that the candidates who received the most votes in each position are all well-known fac...

This evening was the first of the four candidates' question times, with video being recorded (I think?) for the first time. Tallie Kane (reviews editor), Jacob (news editor), Luke (web editor) and Hannah (Pure FM sec) came along and helped out, broadcasting the evening's events to literally billions* of listeners, and videoing the night's proceedings - hopefully the videos should be up on our YouTube stream soon (i.e. once I or another kind soul processes them).

The evening is always scary for the candidates, so a big pat on the back to the girls and guys for doing so well tonight. A few are going to need to be trained to talk louder into the microphone, but that's nothing a little adjustment of the mixing desk can't fix. Alternatively, the "sound engineer's limiting stick" can be used to similar effect... 

Tomorrow night we're doing something very similar over at Rees halls for their residents. I'm told space there is limited, so it's more an opportunity for residents to come down, wonder what the hell we're doing and ask the candidates some questions rather than a bring-all-your-supporters-along-and-make-lots-of-noise night. Not that I mind either way - all I have to do is sit behind a sound desk and try not to get into (any more) trouble!

Thursday and Friday night will see the elections candidates at the Union, so that should be a really good night and will see Pure FM "OBing" (broadcasting live) and the Pugwash News bods recording and interviewing. Ooh, that reminds me, we have loads of interviews from tonight we need to sort out, as well as the candidates' segments.

If only I had half a clue about video editing... Oh dear...!

In other news (ahem), the latest issue - issue 11 - of the newspaper arrived today. It's looking good, although the editorial/pre-press process still needs a little tweaking.

Newspaper "oopses" 

This also appears to be as good a place as any for me to publish some "oopses" from the newspaper... 

I'm guilty as charged of cocking up Jacob's article with the inaccurate 'Frewen Library wins "Best New Building"' headline - apparently the Frewen part is the old building - the new building is simply The University Library. Sorry Jacob!

We also have some images on the PWs front page of the paper credited to "some guy with a camera", and an article has been attributed to the vaguely-titled "Union Council Chair". My apologies to the two hard-working bods involved. The cause of the mistakes will be looked into, and a suitable scapegoat found and made an example of. Possibly...

* potentially, of course ;o)

The Union Council report of a Media & Publifications Numpty, aged 19 and 36/4...

This month, UPSU’s media bods have mainly been focusing their attention on…

Pure FM

• The 24-hour broadcast is looming - as February’s Union Council happens, the broadcast will be underway, with charity fund-raising eBay auctions taking place every hour throughout the day. Tune in! www.purefm.com
• The Pure FM Masterclass - with radio professionals including Radio 1’s BB Aled - is pretty much booked up now, and everyone’s getting ridiculously excited at the prospect of seeing Real Live Celebridees talking radio… ;o) Well done, Pure!

Pugwash magazine

• Issue 3 is out - well done to the team for working so hard on this issue, especially as the end-of-semester period is horribly packed with exams and coursework deadlines, so huuuuge thanks go to everyone who worked so hard. You can pick up a copy around campus now, visit www.pugwashmag.com to download it, or drop into the Union to get yours!
• Distribution of the magazine has been good again, although I think there is a general awareness that we can be more proactive in getting the magazine to a wider audience - watch this space!
• Thanks go to the Pugwash team for their extra hard work in re-jigging the magazine to take into account the change in space availability due to advertising.

Pugwash News & PWs newspaper

• Issues 9 and 10 came out on deadline (although issue 10 then went back in, had a think about it, took off its front cover and came out again…) and both issues received widespread distribution.
• Issue 9 was also a first as we had advertising for the first time - woohoo!
• Sadly, issue 9 fell victim to a very unfortunately-worded article, which resulted in us having to print a full apology and retraction to the University. Here’s what I had to say about this matter in my editorial in issue 10 of the newspaper:“You may have spotted that the front covers from the last issue were conspicuously absent. As you may also have spotted, this issue carries a sincere apology to the University from the Union, relating to the article printed in the last issue which we had to cut out. The last two weeks have been very stressful for a number of the newspaper team and Union staff, as we worked hard to put new systems in place to try to prevent any reoccurrences of the problems which beset that issue.

• “As Media & Publications Officer I want to extend my thanks to all the staff and students involved with the Union, and the staff at the University, who have shown a great deal of patience and understanding while we worked to fix our mistakes, and I am happy that we can now move on with a lot more confidence problems like this one should be avoidable in the future.
  “Once again, many thanks to everyone involved for working so hard this issue, and I hope you as our readership haven't lost any faith in the Union's youngest publication just yet.”

• As a result, a new system for tracking content submissions has been put in place for both publications, and is mentioned below...

Contributor teams - features, news and reviews

• Pugwash and Pugwash News are both supplied by the same three teams of news, features and reviews bods. Due to the newspaper’s issue 9 problems, we have a funky new paper-based tracking system which has - understandably - caused a lot of headaches for the editorial teams as we work together to put theory into practice. However, despite having only three days’ warning and a lunatic sleep-deprived MAPO to guide them, everyone involved in issue 10 of Pugwash News managed to put out a great issue, and one which I intend to be one o...
  
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Random photos from a random Giant Jenga game in the UPSU Sabb office. Well, it was half 9 in the evening, and we were still at work...

9.30pm and still in the office? It must be Giant Jenga time...

Working a typically late Tuesday night. Suddenly, the Pure FM and Pugwash bods in the office discover Sarah B's Giant Jenga and it all gets a bit messy... ;o)

By the way, we don't normally have big kids' games in work - it's just that tomorrow's the Re-Freshers' Fayre, so there's a lot going on at the moment... :o)

Concentration...

Clearly, Ben can't handle the pressure and leaves as Gina goes for a tough shot with the Giant Jenga. It's ok though - her tactics paid off...

Caroline pops in to show off Gamel's latest creation

Gamel Oki, Pugwash mag designer and editor extraordinaire, made this with his eyes shut... Ok, he didn't have his eyes closed, but who cares - very eye-catching design based on the design of the Pugwash mag reviews pages.

If you're online or near the Union on the 21st/22nd Feb, tune in to Pure FM to hear their 24 hour eBay-tastic broadcast!

Now you've done it...

... and then Maz goes and makes a mess of it all. Maaaaaaaaaaz!!! ;o) 

Radio 1's Newsbeat have responded on the BBC's Editors' blog over their coverage - and Radio 1's handling - of the banning and subsequent un-banning of the word "Faggot" from Fairytale Of New York, and how Newsbeat's coverage may have triggered the public backlash against the "overzealously PC" attitude of the radio station.

The interesting aspect for us at the students' union is how Newsbeat works within Radio 1, as well as the BBC's non-profit objectives which aren't entirely dissimilar to the union's.

Newsbeat operates as a news team within Radio 1 - vaguely similar, perhaps, to the way Pugwash News operates within UPSU. Newsbeat's coverage of Radio 1's censorship has been objective and arguably fair - entirely as any quality journalism should be - but the issue here is that, in effect, one part of Radio 1 has caused a backlash against another part of the same organisation for its handling of a potentially sensitive matter.

Within the editorial teams responsible for the Pugwash, Pugwash News and UPSU News output, discussions have often centred around the "what if" scenario of whether and how the Union's media should publicise a story which levels criticism against the Union. Questions have ranged from the broader "can we criticise the Union?", "should we criticise the Union?", and "if we do, how would we go about it?", to some occasionally hilarious potential (and entirely theoretical) scenarios which I obviously can't relate here without libelling myself...

Rod McKenzie, editor of Radio 1's Newsbeat, writes on the BBC Editors' blog: '[this issue] raises some interesting dilemmas for us though: without Radio 1's 10 million plus audience Newsbeat wouldn't exist. But what happens when the station itself IS the news? Does this cramp our journalistic vigour or make us feel we shouldn't take on "the mother ship”? I don't think it does - nor should it ever do so. If we argue that our job is to report the news without fair or favour for other organisations, why should Radio 1 be exempt from that rule? I think pulling our punches would be failing our listeners - Radio 1's listeners. That's just my view.'

Apologies for the lazy journalism - quoting such a large chunk of Mr McKenzie's words - but that paragraph pretty much summarises the way student media should act towards its parent institutions, at least at Portsmouth, but in the wider context of student journalism as well. Our editorial teams should never feel that can't report on something they feel is in the interest of their readers simply because their story might level criticism at the Union or the University.

The counter to this argument, of course, is that this freedom can only work as long as the student journalists maintain a professional approach. Anyone with common sense might wonder whether, on hearing about a story which might criticise them, the Union might feel compelled to "pull" - cancel - the article, preventing it from being published.

This is where we come to the grey area which I think is somewhat unique to student media: the Union should never be allowed to prevent the publication in its media of an objective, balanced and fair article which levels criticism at the Union, but it would be remiss of the Union to play little or no active role in ensuring the content produced in its student media was legally and morally acceptable.

This balancing act is a relatively new consideration for student media in Portsmouth as, until the start of this year,...